PORT ORANGE, Fla. (AP) \u2014 A dispute over a rule led to a brawl during a pickleball game at a central Florida country club, authorities said, with one player hitting his opponent in the face with a paddle and punching him on the ground before others got involved.<\/p>\n
A 63-year-old man was charged Sunday with two counts of felony battery on a person 65 or older, and his 51-year-old wife, who also joined the fight in Port Orange, was charged with a single count of felony battery on a person 65 or older, according to an arrest affidavit.<\/p>\n
The two were playing another married couple when they began arguing about shots being made in what is known as the kitchen, a marked area on either side of the net. By rule, players can only take a shot in the area once the ball has landed there; otherwise they must avoid it.<\/p>\n
The players exchanged insults, and at the end of the match, the man insulted his male opponent\u2019s wife. The men exchanged words, and the 63-year-old man attacked his opponent, according to an affidavit.<\/p>\n
Matt Thompson, an attorney for the man, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. <\/p>\n
As many as 20 players became involved in the brawl, the affidavit said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PORT ORANGE, Fla. (AP) \u2014 A dispute over a rule led to a brawl during a pickleball game…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153784,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[74171,25123,25124,2205,28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-153783","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-ap-oddities","9":"tag-ap-sports","10":"tag-ap-u-s-news","11":"tag-associated-press","12":"tag-florida","13":"tag-florida-headlines","14":"tag-florida-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}